The purpose of the conference is to bring together academic research and public mental health representatives to discuss, develop and implement a research agenda on risk-adjusted public mental health outcomes and utilization. The conference will take place over two days. The first day will include presentations and discussions by researchers and public mental health representatives on: . General risk-adjustment design and analysis: principles and procedures. . Mental health risk-adjustment research to date: findings, importance and shortcomings. . Identification of important mental health treatment and utilization outcomes and predictors. . Review of current state mental health outcomes monitoring systems: advantages and shortcomings. The second day of the conference will be devoted to workgroup sessions to prepare a research agenda. The workgroup sessions will address the following topics: . Identifying goals and objectives in mental health risk-adjustment, and key steps needed to reach these goals and objectives. . Grant writing strategy development, including identifying potential funders, creating teams, and developing specific topics. . Sharing and analysis of existing data to conduct risk-adjustment and examine it statistical and practical importance. . Using risk-adjusted outcome results for quality monitoring and improvement. We have already formulated a national advisory committee of researchers and public mental health representatives, and identified a keynote speaker. Planning for next steps will be deliberatively addressed during the conference, and might include a plan for certain participants to write a collaborative research grant application, engage in a collaborative study of existing databases, engage in a collaborative study on how to exist existing data to generate risk-adjusted outcome reports with high practical utility, or form an ongoing risk-adjusted outcomes consortium for data sharing and research development. The conference will generate three short-term products: a written conference report, formation of a data sharing consortium, and formation of grant writing plans and teams. The long-term objective is to implement and evaluate in public mental health organizations a valid outcomes risk- adjustment technology for quality monitoring and improvement purposes.